Bigger battles

posted on December 2nd, 2011, 6:37 pm

This might belong to a mod Idea, so please move if inappropriate here.
Bassically, for a few ships, instead of having one sabre, you have three; they'll fly around and act like fighters same would go with all the first tier ships. second tier ships would have 2 ships flying around and 3rd tier ships would only be single. (for all races expt the Borg.) it should be like a toggelable option and default off. its just an improvement for game graphics and would allow for slightly more confusion and larger battles (like the ones we saw in DS9.).

Just to-do if there's nothing else to work on. Thinking loud  . I don't think it would be great for the effort put in, but would be fun to have.

posted on December 2nd, 2011, 6:48 pm

Very creative idea!  I can't really see it being in stock Flops but I bet someone could make a mod of this idea. 

posted on December 2nd, 2011, 9:50 pm

The idea is solid, but the amount of coding work would be extreme.  Something like that needs its own engine, designed from the ground-up to handle squad movement.  Like Empire at War.

posted on December 2nd, 2011, 10:01 pm

I could imagine this for Bugs and B'rels, nothing more. Feds shouldn't have loads of throw away ships imo, the Sabre has its use, but not as cannon fodder.

posted on December 3rd, 2011, 1:42 am

Sounds good, but as Tryptic said the amount of coding would be massive, and you'd need a good squad movement system. I think I did something similar waaay back when for Galactic Battlegrounds when I first got into modding, and made fighter and troop squads to replace the single ones. Needless to say it was alot of work that took quite a bit of time, and even then it turned out pretty crummy. In short, its a pretty good idea, just not one that would work out too well in Fleetops.

posted on December 3rd, 2011, 2:14 am

I think that this is a good idea, but larger battles could result from simply doubling the ship and station build/refit times (leaving research times alone).  The longer it takes to build, the lower your resource income needs to be.  The lower your resource income needs to be, the more shipyards you can put up.  The more shipyards you can put up, the more ships you can build.

PS:  I did a test of this where I used the build time multiplier in the game setup screen for ship build times.  It made a big economy strain at the start, but the doubled build time very quickly overcame the initial economy strain.

posted on December 3rd, 2011, 3:44 am

Ohh, yeah I can see this working.  Not very much like Armada, but it could make for a good game, making it so that all your ships of the same class worked as a single entity.

It would be really cool if you could link certain ships together to make a support group, so that they would act like a squad but retain certain buff specials that were automatically used but only applied to the group.  if that makes sense.   they could auto adjust speed too so that they stayed together as a group as well as fight as a group.

posted on December 3rd, 2011, 9:42 am

Oh? Battles not big enough? At least once a week i get into such a fight that you can't see anything from all the explosions on the battlefield and you are still not satisfied?

posted on December 7th, 2011, 2:36 am

Using the fighter process to give large ships destroyer "escorts" works fairly well (aside from the destroyers coming out of the larger ship on launch).  It's easy to do, realistic that high value ships would have escorts, and plays pretty well.  It doesn't affect balance if you do it evenly, and it gives the light destroyers a place later in the game (especially in single player).

posted on December 17th, 2011, 5:08 pm

i really like the notion of wings , in a wing there would be between 4-5 ships  and from the really small destroyers to  the tough battleships but excluding the warp-in ships , i think it can be very  diverse gameplay .

plus on the retaking of ds9 there were using wings of ships .

your thought on the subject?

posted on December 17th, 2011, 8:16 pm

is it possible to give ships the fighter classlabel and yet still build them out of the yard? and then they automatically attach themselves to a larger capital ship.. say 2 or 3 sabers with a Galaxy? and like a couple defiants with a Sovvy?

posted on December 17th, 2011, 10:03 pm

Yes, that should be possible

posted on December 18th, 2011, 4:41 pm

that  what i was talking about plus a homogenic clas wings like a wing of sovvies , or galaxies.

posted on December 18th, 2011, 8:09 pm

They won't use fighter physics though will they? Theyll use whatever physics are assigned to it...

posted on December 18th, 2011, 8:23 pm

It'll use fighter physics if you use the appropriate craft AI - that's the craft behavior assigned by the AIprocess